The Bridon Technology Centre (BTC) is a world leading centre of excellence for rope technology development, testing & verification.

The Bridon Technology Centre (BTC) harnesses the wealth of knowledge Bridon has acquired serving global industries for more than a century and combines this with significant investments in personnel, unique test equipment and forensic laboratories.

A clear demonstration of Bridon’s commitment to our customers, the BTC dramatically increases the capability of our organisation to fast-track development of innovative new rope technologies to meet the ever increasing demands of the markets we serve.

The BTC will accelerate the development of rope technology that will increase the safety, performance and operational life of ropes working in demanding and hostile environments typical to our core markets in the Oil & Gas, Mining, Construction and Fishing sectors.

In addition to delivering the next generation of rope technologies the Bridon Technology Centre also provides an extensive range of unique facilities for the testing, analysis and verification of new and used ropes.

The Bridon Technology Centre expands our ability to support joint ventures with leading organisations to provide the products and services that will enable the potentially possible to become economically attractive.

Expert analysis of these new data streams allows Bridon and our customer’s to gain deeper insight into rope characteristics and performance. Using this knowledge we can better focus development of new products and rope technologies that will deliver higher performance, increased safety and exceptional reliability in practise as well as in theory.

The BTC’s comprehensive testing facilities for wire, strand and rope manufactured from steel and synthetics includes:

Rope Torque-Turn
Testing

High capacity Bend Fatigue Testing and Analysis

Rope / Termination /
Polymer / Metallurgical expertise

Wire rope Breaking
Force Testing

Microscopic analysis using latest 3D technology

Unique Multi-Layer Spooling (MLS) testing capability

Fibre rope Breaking
Force Testing

Extensive Rope Fatigue Testing Capability

Wire Tensile Testing with Optical Extensometer

Rope Investigation
and Analysis Laboratories

The Bridon Technology Centre (BTC) provides access to one of the most comprehensive laboratory test facilities for steel wire and fibre rope and their components, in the world.

Continued investment in infrastructure, the latest equipment and on-going development of personnel ensures that our customers and partners receive technical support of the highest standard.

The range of testing, verification & analysis
services available from the BTC includes;

Multi-Layer
Spooling (MLS) Test

Multi-layer spool winch designs allow industrial winch and crane OEM’S to utilise smaller and more economic winch spools. These types of winch arrangements are attractive as they reduce space requirements and therefore cost, however, MLS can cause accelerated rope deterioration due to damage caused by a rope crossing over its self during spooling at high speed or through crush damage.

Bridon’s MLS Test Machine allows ropes to be repeatedly tested and cross over & crush resistance measured. Testing of 32mm diameter ropes with maximum loads of 32 tonnes will be used to establish an accurate source of data for use in optimising and developing high performance ropes for multi-layer spooling applications.

TESTING INVESTIGATION
VERIFICATION ANALYSIS

Wire and Fibre Rope Breaking Force Testing and Wire Tensile Testing

The quality, integrity and ability of a rope to carry loads safely is a function of the tensile strength of the wire combined with the design and quality of manufacturing employed to produce a wire strand and subsequent rope.

To expand our understanding and ability to test and verify new and existing rope designs Bridon have invested in tensile testing equipment for wire and breaking force test equipment for wire and fibre ropes.

ROPE TORQUE-TURN TESTING

Different rope constructions exhibit varying degrees of torque and rotation characteristics under load dependent on rope material and design. To better quantify, understand and then eliminate this phenomenon, Bridon have increased Rope Torsion Testing capability with the addition of a unique 1,500kN Torsion Test Machine.

ROPE BEND FATIGUE TESTING

For many applications the life expectancy and performance of the rope is determined its ability to endure the fatigue associated with repeated bending over sheaves used in lifting, lowering and conveying equipment.

Our purpose made Bend Fatigue Machines can replicate these dynamic operating conditions including reverse bending to provide accurate measurement of the deterioration of rope performance.

Test range: 20 to 100mm rope diameterMaximum load: 160 tonnes

Metallurgy & Micro Analysis

The BTC utilises the latest 3D Microscope technology to provide comprehensive examination of rope component surfaces and high resolution optical microscopy to enable investigation of rope materials right down to their microscopic structure.